Roger M. Wilcox's review of

Five Fingers of Death

Remeber when the producers of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon told
everybody that their film belonged to a specific genre of Chinese martial arts
fantasy movies (which play approximately the same role in Chinese culture that
cowboy movies play in American culture), and that these Chinese martial arts
fantasy movies were normally made with really really low budgets?

Well, this is the kind of movie they were talking about. Five Fingers of
Death uses the same types of plot devices and martial arts action sequences
that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon does — in fact, the martial
arts training camp in this movie looks the spittin' image of the one in
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon — BUT, Five Fingers of Death
is hardly the cinematic masterpiece that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
is. Five Fingers of Death is poorly written, poorly acted, and generally
looks like it was produced on a budget of $45 in loose change.

In stort, Five Fingers of Death is the kind of cheap, cheesy chop-socky
action flick that connoiseurs of bad movies can have loads of fun ripping on.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around a couple of martial arts schools
gearing up for the Big Martial Arts Tournament. And when I say big tournament,
I mean BIIIIIIG tournament. The winner got to be Emperor of China or something.
(I conceded that choosing your leaders by having them beat each other up is
somewhat more civilized than the traditional method of having them wage war
across the whole countryside, but couldn't they have had a chess game or a
popular election instead?)

Winning the tournament is such a coveted prize, in fact, that the Evil Martial
Arts School tries to pull every dirty rotten conniving trick they could to
ensure that they would win. They terrorize the Good Martial Arts School across
town. They hire one of the students at the Good Martial Arts School to be a
double-agent for them. They hire Super-Evil Japanese Martial Artists to kill
people who get in their way. (In 1973, when this movie was made, the Chinese
still had kind of a sore spot for than whole Rape of Nanking thing, so Japanese
people were fair game to use as soulless villains.) When they learn that the
star pupil of the Good Martial Arts School is learning the dreaded IRON FIST
technique, they ambush him in the woods and break both his hands, then sneak
back to his home town and kill his foster dad. Their head thug gouges
somebody's eyes out by using the Three Stooges Eye Poking Maneuver of Death.

Finally, the day of the tournament arrives. The Evil Martial Arts School sends
its Super-Evil Japanese thugs out to stop the Good Martial Arts School's star
pupil from showing up to the tournament on time (and hence forfeiting the
tournament). But even though the Super-Evil Japanese are armed with swords,
they can't stop the Good Martial Arts School's star pupil, because he has
learned the IRON FIST technique. (This technique apparently consists of a
bright red spotlight being shined on the star pupil's hands, accompanied by an
annoying police car siren sound.) Our hero makes it to the tournament on time
and wins it, which ticks off the Evil Martial Arts School's Headmaster so much
that he stabs the Good Martial Arts School's Headmaster to death. Then the guy
who got his eyes gouged out fights the Evil Headmaster in the dark and gets
killed, THEN the hero fights the Evil Headmaster (who retreats to his study and
commits hari-kari rather than die at the hands of the IRON FIST technique),
THEN the hero fights the leader of the Super-Evil Japanese thugs to the death,
and then everybody has a group hug and they all ride off into the sunset and
live happily ever after.

The best thing about this film is that, right now, the DVD is on sale for $4.00
at K-Mart. Maybe you too can learn the IRON FIST technique from it, before your
enemies do!